Let’s talk about dick pics. Is that the plural? Buzzfeed’s copy chief thinks so. In her modern grammar guide A World Without Whom (Bloomsbury, 2017), Emmy Favilla grapples with alternatives from dicks pic to dicks pics, before settling on the new normal.
Since normality is the issue. No week can pass without a new pubic scandal popping up. (Yes, I will try to avoid the dad jokes, but it’s hard. See?) Of course if you don’t wish to travel below the belt then head for the gardening pages, but the trend warrants a linguistic look.
Jonathan Green, the British godfather of slang, spent years sweeping books and press for naughty bits. His landmark study of 2013 unearthed some 2600 genitalia terms across five centuries, from schlongs to one-eyed trouser snakes – and that’s just the penis.
Since the dick did dominate. Are we surprised? In the age-old saga of Willy and Fanny, we all know Willy goes on a bit. Amanda Montell, a US linguist, calls it the phallus-centric perspective in her brilliant Wordslut (Nero, 2019), exploring language through a feminist lens.
Green’s survey forms part of Montell’s Chapter 10: Cyclops, Panty Puppet, Bald-Headed Bastard (and 100+ Other Things To Call Your Genitalia). Not only do we meet roosters and joysticks, we see how sexual verbs are likewise skewed towards man-think, from bone to screw. Compare that, as Montell imagines, to the alt-realism of a female brag: “I sheathed the living daylights out of him.” Or: “We enveloped all night.”
Cue the dick pic. Or the “inappropriate image” as court transcripts insist. A raunchy graphic. A vulgar affront. A private part made public. A membergram. Monitoring the squeamish bids for synonyms by journos and barristers has become my new hobby, seeing language invent itself. Though there’s no denying the WYSIWYG neatness of dick pic (hyphen optional).
Besides, the Seussian rhyme steals a certain machismo from the gesture. Its short-i echo makes virility as endearing as a calendar kitten. Colloquially, the label tracks with the Australian gift for hypocorism, a fancier term for cutesy-speak, where breakfast is brekkie and Shazza has a map of Tassie to Wayno’s willy.
Further to that, dick pic answers to euphemism. For all its lewdness, the term outrivals any forensic details or the Mills & Boon-ish bollocks of love gun or equipment. Please. Good citizens have suffered enough.
Better than that, should the public gallery settle on the dick pic nickname, then consensus avoids what Spectator journalist John Sturgis called Knobbly Monster Syndrome. Otherwise known as the second mention, this is the folly of a crocodile, say, being supplanted by a dozen different names across one nature doco, from apex saltie to cold-blooded predator to … yes, knobbly monster.
For all the sniggers, however, dick pic has been plaguing me. Are we dealing with euphemism or deflection? Should two consenting adults find cause to trade such imagery, fine. But unsolicited, unwelcome, the image stands to offend, distress, rendering the playful tag misplaced. The shock is minimised. Tamed, the cheeky vernacular serves an inadvertent defence, or mitigating circumstances, just as love-tap excuses the violence of a domestic punch.
And that’s not OK. Nor is cyberflash or sausage snap or anything else adrift on Urban Dictionary. Making the label for this excessive exhibitionism one sticky pickle.
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David Astle is the crossword compiler and Wordplay columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a broadcaster on ABC Radio Melbourne.
